We arrived last night at another Boondockers Welcome site in Salida, CO. They are having a big kayak festival this weekend, and the town is really busy. We decided to do some sightseeing today, so we drove across Monarch Pass to Crested Butte. The Madonna Mine is one of the biggest sights on the eastern side of the pass.
Huge area was minedThe mill is still impressive
The pass is high enough that Kevin and I were both yawning a lot to get more oxygen in our lungs. We live at 800’!
The GPS told us why we had no oxygen
The views in Crested Butte were the standard lovely vistas.
Looking from Mt Crested Butte to Crested Butte
We had Father’s Day dinner tonight because tomorrow will be a hard day. We are driving all the way to Cheyenne, WY, and we have to get going early to miss the hoards coming from the front range into Colorado Springs and Denver. The roads can come to a complete halt by late afternoon so we want to get through early. Our host has been lovely here, and we are going to another Boondockers Welcome site before heading to Buffalo, WY and a real campground! We disconnected from our host 20 amp electricity as soon as it cooled down enough to turn off the AC, and we will be running on battery and solar until we get to Buffalo. Checking out the new lithium batteries!
We spent the last day, 9 June, at Canton Lake in Oklahoma driving to Boiling Springs State Park. The park doesn’t have hot springs like the name implies, but it has bubbly natural springs that have been an attraction for thousands of years. The park is small, and it was really, really hot, so we mostly just drove through, stopping at some of the sights. The park facilities were mostly built by the CCC in the 1930s. The big pool and wading pool have had updates since them, but the buildings are still mostly CCC work. The National Park Service did the architectural work, and it is pretty obvious.
A church group was enjoying the big conference center, also built by the CCCA wonderful old water tower built by CCC
We left Canton for our first Boondocker’s Welcome stay on 10 June. We stayed at a working ranch just barely into Texas off I-40. BW is a subscription service for overnight stays offered by volunteer hosts. There is a $50/year charge for the service, but no charge for the location unless there are other amenities offered. In our case, we got a halfway level site with a gravel base, 50 amp service (!), and nice views for no cost. The hosts get “paid” with a membership in BW themselves. The electrical service was nice because it was still hotter than hell! We could have used our generator of course, but the lack of noise was nice. I gave them a thank you gift – two bowl cozies made with a great camper fabric with a red background. It turned out the wife of the couple was also a member of the FB group RV Quilters, just like me. We had a nice chat.
The forecast was for significant wind on 11 June, so we left our BW site by 7:15 to get as much driving as possible in before the winds got extra bad. It was over 300 miles to Raton, our next spot, and some of it was white knuckle driving. I can handle 20-25mph steady winds without issue, and up to 30-35 in a pinch, but we eventually got winds so gusty we had to pull off the road for a couple of hours. It was NOT a fun drive, but we eventually made it.
The Raton KOA is the lowest level of KOA, a Journey. This category is for locations oriented towards those passing through, not those looking for many amenities. They gave us a tight 30 amp back-in site with nice trees for shade, but we had to position the rig very carefully to fit; it was not designed for a 40’, 4 slide motorhome! We made it, but there was no option to open the awning! Luckily the trees were quite nice, and I sat in the shade for a few hours each day. This KPA has pull-through and 50 amp sites available, but those are held for the overnighters. It was rather amazing watching the park transition from mostly empty to completely full in 3 hours each day. Every morning the first folks started leaving around 6:00 am (yes, I wake up ridiculously early!), and the park was empty again by 10:00.
Since the drive in was so tough, we ate dinner at the Colefax Ale Cellar, a brewery with good sandwiches and better beer. We ended up buying some of their great dark beer to take with us. It is hard being a stout and ale drinker in a world of IPAs, but they had some good ones.
We got around the next day to drive to a long loop to Cimaron, Eagle Next, Red River, and Taos. It was a great trip! I always stop and read all the historic markers, and we accidentally found one about the town of Dawson, an old Phelps-Dodge mining town. What a serendipitous find! The drive in was lovely. The community was a classic company town with a population of 6,000. When the mines closed in 1950, some parts went to other company towns but most was just razed and the debris removed.
Not much left of the town
The community was infamous for two horrific mine explosions, one in 1913 and another in 1923 with a total of 383 miners killed. The company provided the metal crosses since so many were immigrants away from their families. Some families added traditional markers later. The cemetery is maintained by an old settlers group, and they have big gatherings every 2 years.
The old cemetery was well kept and poignant
I have really bad internet here, so I will leave the rest of our trip for another post.
